Extreme Temperatures
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Igloo

Another reason to eat meat: Vegetarian cave bear 'starved to death' during Ice Age

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© N. Frotzler European cave bear: It is thought Neanderthals revered the animal and treated it as a god
The mainly-vegetarian bear is likely to have starved during the Ice Age when its main source of food disappeared. Carbon dating of cave bear bones suggests its extinction almost 30,000 years ago, coincided with major changes in the environment.

Professor Anthony Stuart, a Natural History Museum palaeontologist, and a colleague from the University of Vienna, used new radiocarbon dating of fossil remains from sites across Europe, to accurately establish the timing of the bear's disappearance.

The cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) was found across much of Europe from Spain to the Urals but no further east suggesting it was unsuited to areas of extreme temperatures.

Despite weighing up to 1,000lbs the cave bear, unlike its modern day counterpart which eats fish, was entirely vegetarian and probably ran out of food as the climate cooled and vegetation disappeared.

Igloo

Global cooling predicted for the next 30 years

Dr. Norman Page says that "The earth is entering a cooling phase which is likely to last about 30 years and possibly longer." See his detailed analysis here.

Page's prediction is based on observation of the geologic record. He notes that there has been no net warming since 1997 even thought carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has risen 8.5%. Page says that atmospheric temperature is driven by sea surface temperature (SST) which is, itself, solar driven. The oceanic oscillations control the general climate.

There is good correlation between solar cycles and SST, but note that because of the enthalpy and thermal inertia of the oceans, there is a 10 - 12 year lag between solar cycle troughs and global SSTs. This lag time definitely establishes cause and effect similar to the lag in carbon dioxide changes following temperature changes in the major glacial cycles as shown in ice cores The graph below shows the variations in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the major oceanic oscillation (the red line is actual measurement, the blue line is predictive modeling.) (Graph source here.)

Global Cooling
© TallBloke Wordpress
Page says than in the figure "an approximate 60 year cycle is obvious by inspection and this coincides well with the 30 year +/- positive (warm) and 30year +/- negative (cold) phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation." The graph "shows warming from about 1910 to 1940-45, cooling from then to about 1975, warming to about 2003-5 and cooling since then. Total warming during the 20th century was about 0.8 degrees C." He also says that it is clear that we are entering the beginning of a 30-year cool phase of the PDO.

Snowflake Cold

Cooling in the near future?

Global Cooling - Climate and Weather Forecasting

Introduction.


Over the last 10 years or so as new data have accumulated the general trend and likely future course of climate change has become reasonably clear. The earth is entering a cooling phase which is likely to last about 30 years and possibly longer. The major natural factors controlling climate change have also become obvious.Unfortunately the general public has been bombarded by the scientific and media and political establishments with anthropogenic global warming - anti CO2 propaganda based on the misuse and misrepresentation of already shoddy IPCC "science" for political ,commercial and personal ends.

The IPCC climate science community largely abandoned empirical Baconian inductive scientific principles and built worthless climate models based on unfounded assumptions designed to show that anthropogenic CO2 was the driving force behind changing climate. Most of the IPCC output is useless as a tool for predicting future climate trends and their impacts and in particular the IPCC Summaries for Policymakers can be safely ignored for practical purposes. The divergence between the IPCC Hansen projections and the observed trends is shown [below].
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© Prof. Jan-Erik Solheim (Oslo)Fig. 1
Fortunately, however , the basic data is now easily available so that any reasonably intelligent person can check on line daily or monthly to see what the incoming empirical data actually is and draw ones own conclusions.

Here's how to do it in a few simple steps. I have put in CAPITALS the main empirical observations on which one can draw conclusions re climate change, its causes and future trends and also get a good idea of weather patterns and trends for the next year or so.

Snowflake Cold

Autumn snow extent has increased by 25% since records began

Week 44 northern hemisphere snow extent has increased by 25% since the start of the satellite era in 1979, and this year has the second highest snow extent during that period. Russia and Canada are almost completely covered with snow.
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Rutgers University Climate Lab : Global Snow Lab.

http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/table_area.php?ui_set=0&ui_sort=1
2012 also set the record for the greatest Antarctic sea ice cover ever measured.

Climate experts tell us that declining snow and ice cover is an essential ingredient of global warming.

Snowflake

Ice Age Cometh? Coldest weather for one hundred years coming to Britain

cold weather
A severe bout of cold weather looks to be heading Britain's way
Britain will grind to a halt within weeks as the most savage freeze for a century begins.

Temperatures will fall as low as minus 20C in rural areas, forecasters warned last night, while heavy snow and "potentially dangerous" blizzards will close roads and cripple rail networks.

James Madden, forecaster for Exacta Weather, said: "We are looking at some of the coldest and snowiest conditions in at least 100 years. This is most likely to occur in the December to January period with the potential for widespread major snowfall across the country.

"Parts of the North, Scotland and eastern England are likely to experience a run of well below average temperatures, which will include some potentially dangerous blizzard conditions at times."

He warned the South faces a bout of "unusually heavy snowfall" in December.

Leon Brown, meteorologist for The Weather Channel, said snow could arrive as early as next weekend, with temperatures falling to minus 5C in the North.

"There is a 30 per cent risk of some snow over lower levels in Scotland on Friday."

Snowflake Cold

Brutus breaks snowfall record in Helena, Montana

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Maintenance crews work to remove snow from Nelson Stadium Friday for Carroll College's final game of the season Saturday against Dickerson State. In the last 48 hours the Helena area has received about 12 inches of snow, which made for intense work to clear the stands and field.
Helena crushed a snowfall record Thursday, and was on the way to doing the same Friday as winter storm Brutus brutalized the town.

Helena saw 8.8 inches of snow Thursday. The previous snowfall record for Nov. 8 was 2.3 inches, set in 1903.

Zach Uttech, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Great Falls, said the south-west flowing air mass from Canada has created an ideal scenario for widespread snow over the region, blanketing Montana with an abundance of snow.

Total snow accumulation could hit nearly 14 inches in downtown Helena, which would put Thursday and Friday among the top for highest snowfall in a two-day period for the month of November, Uttech said. As of noon on Friday, the two-day total was 12.6 inches.

Snowflake Cold

Edmonton auto body shops 'chaotic all day' after massive snowfall

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© John Lucas, Edmonton JournalA motorist gets a push on Ada Boulevard in the heavy snow in Edmonton on November 7, 2012.
Edmonton police say roads are faring better following the city's near-record snowfall, despite frigid overnight temperatures that left surfaces slick and icy.

The number of crashes recorded so far Thursday morning is down by half compared with Wednesday. Between 6 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., police responded to 23 crashes, including three that caused injuries, compared with 53 crashes, seven of which caused injuries, at the same time one day earlier, said spokeswoman Lisa Sobchyshyn.

Environment Canada reports that Edmonton received between 14 and 31 centimetres of snow, while St. Albert got a whopping 35 cm.

With more than 200 crashes recorded between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. Wednesday, auto body shops around the city saw a major increase in customers.

Snowflake Cold

Winter storm Brutus threatens snow, severe weather for US West, Midwest

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© Weather.com
Even before Winter Storm Athena can finish pulling away from the Northeast, we have another significant winter storm system to deal with in the western half of the country: Winter Storm Brutus. This time, not only will there be a wind-snow combo on the cold side of the system, but there will be a warm sector with severe weather potential - eventually.

But first things first.

Wintry Side: Snow, Wind, Blizzard?

With strong low pressure developing over the northern Rockies and a strong high pressure zone to the north over western Canada, the stage is set for a wind-driven snow.

That snow will develop over Montana and central Idaho on Thursday. There will also be snow farther west over the Oregon Cascades and the northern Sierra Nevada in California.

Snowflake

Record-breaking blizzard freezes Beijing before Congress

Beijing snow
© (STR/AFP/Getty Images)Workers clear a snow-covered street after a heavy snow-fall in the outskirts of Beijing on Nov. 4, 2012.
Netizens and scholar point to traditional culture, and posit causal link

A blizzard swept through northeastern China on Nov. 4, shutting down transportation in Beijing just before the opening of the 18th Party Congress. The unexpectedly early snow storm was commented on heavily, with Internet users drawing a connection between the inclement weather and the Chinese Communist Party's upcoming political meeting.

Breaks Records

In the early morning on Nov. 4, Beijing's Weather Bureau issued their most severe weather warning, a red alert, for the western and northern parts of the city and a second most severe warning, an orange alert, for the entire city, reported the state-run China Daily.

Igloo

How Earth's oceans plunged the planet into a catastrophic big freeze - and it wasn't caused by humans

The planet's last major cold spell 13,000 years ago was caused by a catastrophic deluge of frigid fresh water from north-west Canada into the Arctic ocean, a new study suggests. Detailed computer simulations show meltwater from the enormous Laurentide Ice Sheet halted the sinking of very dense, saltier, colder water in the North Atlantic.
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© Alan CondronDetailed: A new model of flood waters from the melting Laurentide Ice Sheet shows how water first flowed north-west into the Arctic, weakening deep ocean circulation and leading to the Earth's last major cold period
That stopped the large scale ocean circulation - the so-called thermohaline circulation - that transports heat to Europe and North America, causing the continents to dramatically freeze. The findings offer a new explanation for the cause of this last big chill, which scientists had thought was caused by freshwater flowing into the Atlantic through Canada's Gulf of St Lawrence.

It led to a cold spell lasting more than 1,000 years known as the Younger Dryas or 'Big Freeze', during which temperatures in parts of the northern hemisphere fell to about 10 degrees C colder than they are today.